Wilfred Owen

1914 Poem by Wilfred Owen

War broke: and now the Winter of the worldWith perishing great darkness closes in.The foul tornado, centred at Berlin,Is over all the width of Europe whirled,Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furledAre all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now beginFamines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.But now, for us, wild Winter, and the needOf sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

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Comments about this poem (1914 by Wilfred Owen )

There was a time when war started and ended. In today's world it never seems to end. Blood thirsty humans have crossed all the boundaries. Nothing is off the table. Reading this poem is painful yet in some way it's poetic expression has a calm effect. All I can do is to pray for peace. May peace prevail in our hearts.
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A great prophetic poem foreshadowing T S Eliot's 'The Wasteland' and the retreat of modern art after WWI into abstraction and subjectivity. The more I read Owen the bigger he gets as a poet.
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